


Flowers From the Dead

by memeberd



Category: Sam & Max
Genre: About As Angsty As Sam & Max Can Possibly Get, And Also The Cartoon, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Budding Freelance Husband Relationship, Dark Inane Comedy, Gay Panic, However It's Meant To Be Sensitive Rather Than Insensitive, Idk How Elder Gods And Interdimensional Travel Work, Inspired by the ending of season 3, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, My City Now... Come Along For The Ride, Not Canon Compliant, Permanent Character Death, So I'm Inventing Things, Temporary Character Death, f/f relationship, idiot plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25431373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memeberd/pseuds/memeberd
Summary: Having failed to save his precious little buddy, Sam is too shaken to convince this Max from an alternate universe to go home – With the blood of his best friend and lover on his hands possibly forever, Max could never leave his new Sam alone. They don't mean to replace their original other half, but what else can they do?No matter how many times they try, Sam and Max can't continue on like normal after this.Meanwhile, two people on opposite ends of the Sam and Max fan spectrum; Darla Gugenheek, a mildly bitter, self defined 13 year old who's friends playfully refer to as simply "the Geek" and struggling through her own losses; and Lorne, self proclaimed Friend For Life and novice challenge-maker; find themselves even more involved in their favorite detectives' lives.
Relationships: Darla "The Geek" Gugenheek & Max & Sam, Max/Sam (Sam & Max)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	Flowers From the Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tale based off the gripping psychological thriller: _Sam and Max get Locked Inside a House_

As Sam stared longingly out at the location where he'd last seen Max before all this mess, he noticed something gleaming at the apex of Lady Liberty's torch. He furrowed his brows and squinted as if that would help him see it clearer. He tried to make sense of what could possibly have made her light glow so fervently, but it wasn't until primitive reflexes had him cocking his head to the side that the two things misaligned with each other. Then he realized it was the explosion that ended his little buddy, lingering on untouched in the vacuum of space.

In that moment Sam's heart swelled with a bruising mixture of awe and grief. It looked like a supernova way out there.

"Well would you look at that?" Sam chuckled as he took off his hat and watched the brilliant gleam with tears in his eyes. "You're a star, Max!"

The longer Sam watched the phenomenon, the heavier his chest felt. Eventually he needed the railing preventing people from taking one bad step into the ocean to keep himself on his feet. 

"It's real pretty," Sam bitterly muttered to himself, "I wish you could see it. From down here..."

Whimpers tugged on Sam's lungs. He buried his chin into his palm in an attempt to keep quiet. Thinking that what he'd want to do for the rest of his life was visit this spot and nothing else.

He was sorry. That was what sucked the most. Sorry didn't cut it when the person you wished you could apologize to was too busy being dead to hear it. And if Sam _had_ the chance to apologize, he'd yank Max back into the world of the living instead. Never let him go.

He hoped no one was too close behind him to hear him cry. Ironically enough, he heard someone's voice from back there when he hoped that.

"Sam, Sam, Sam…" Max's voice said in mock disapproval.

Sam seized up immediately, his eyes blowing wide and freezing on Lady Liberty.

"... Aren't _you_ a sight for sore eyes?"

Sam sucked in a short breath and looked behind himself with an excited grin. His little buddy stood right there! Hands on his hips and all puffed up like their last case had been nothing but one harrowingly elaborate prank orchestrated by the little guy himself. Sam could certainly laugh it all off like it was!

He left his hat to be forgotten so he could rush toward Max and drown him in his arms.

" _Maax!"_

"Tee-hee," Max giggled before his lungs were crushed.

"Oh my god, Max," Sam breathed in relief. He let himself weep a little more.

Sam missed the feeling of Max's downy fur against his snout. His nose emotionally snuffled its way into Max's pinchable cheek and buried itself in the fur. His little buddy smelled like he always did. Arson-y. With faded cologne that was meant to cover up the firey smell but never did.

Max didn't protest like he usually did, so Sam sniffed and cried and rubbed his snout all over Max's face. There was no cursing or chiding for Sam to stop, so he just kept right on smothering him. Max's arms reached around to return his hug. A soft, rare, purring noise graced Sam's ears. Finally Sam rested his snout right where Max's neck would be if he had one and grinned into the fur. The purr was getting louder... Max hadn't purred like that since they were kids.

"How did you get yourself away from the explosion in time?" Sam asked him.

Max creaked under the pressure of Sam's embracing arms. " _That was the easy part,"_ He wheezed like a balloon, still smiling through the strain of being loved on by Sam, "I time traveled!"

Sam had smothered Max enough right then. He held Max at arm's length and they stared at each other for a beat. They asked a question at the same time.

"Wait, how do you know about the bomb?"

"You time traveled?"

Sam set Max down and scanned the area for Max's means of transportation. It was nowhere. Max may as well have been birthed from the tarry pavement of the road.

"Then where's the elevator?" Sam asked him.

Max pointed behind himself. "I parked it in that alley over there so I could come out and surprise you! .... Surpriiiiiise!"

"But if you time traveled here…" Sam asked slowly. "Aren't you from the past?"

"No, Sam." Max said. " _You're_ from the past. I saw the future. The horrible, horrible future."

Sam clutched Max's shoulders. That didn't make any fucking sense. "What did you see," Sam swallowed uneasily, "what happened in our future?"

"The preceding events are irrelevant," Max recounted, "but you accidentally consumed the embryo fluids of a little baby elder god of destruction that was supposed to bring about the end of the world! I guess maybe the god DNA fused with you or something, because then you turned into this _incredible_ rampaging c'thulu-dog monster!" 

Max drew his hands up and curled his fingers to do a menacing pose. Sam's smile was falling. He was actually, admittedly, starting to feel a little angry. _Is this little pimple still joking?_

"It was _so cool_ , Sam!" Max's hands clenched into fists and vibrated. "You ate an ice cream truck, a school bus, half of Stinky's Diner, the trash we were supposed to take out this Friday, the carnival ride Lorne used to illegally hang his hat in, probably also Lorne now that I think about it, another ice cream truck...!

"Anyway, then Superball told me since I was next in line for President I had to blow you up to save the world."

Sam felt so overwhelmingly lost that he involuntarily bared his teeth.

He had to ask him, "What the hell are you talking about, Max?" 

" _I wasn't gonna do it!"_ Max took on a defensive fighting stance, "but, _you know,_ after awhile I had to ask myself; what would _Sam_ want?"

Sam's teeth disappeared once more. Max relaxed and nodded for further affirmation. Sam kind of looked down at his toes and adjusted his tie.

"Yeah? Would Sam want the entire world to fall into an age of ruin and despair at his own hands?"

Sam sighed and said, "No," dejectedly.

"Plus, the longer I stalled the more underground militias formed with a unifying goal of seeing your demise! So, _now,_ here I am."

"You blew me up." Sam said flatly.

"It was pretty awesome." Max grinned sheepishly.

"I'll bet it was!" Sam said. "But… I really hate to tell you this because you must've worked your cottony tail off to get here, but I don't think I'm your Sam, buddy."

Max's grin dropped and he went deadpan mode.

"I get that you're mad I blew you up and all, Sam, but I'm not gonna stop coming back here until we get this right."

Sam fixed Max with a pained stare, his ears and eyes drooping.

Max appeared to notice something right then. He pointed to himself, and then to Sam, and then all around, and then he said, "Where am _I?"_

Sam pointed up at the brightest star in the sky.

"You're up there right now, little pal." 

"I don't understand!" Max lamented. "Last time I almost died, God told me he thought I was funny so he'd let me live out the rest of my life and after that it was hell for me! I appreciate how upfront he was about it,"

" _Not_ _that,_ bucket-head. That whole thing with the baby god embryo! That happened to _you_ and you teleported yourself far into space to save everybody from the nuclear bomb that got embedded in your chest!"

"Holy shit, I got hit with a nuclear warhead and IT WAS A DUD? THANKS, GOD!"

Sam swallowed down insisting that the concept of god they grew up on wasn't real and gestured up to the everlasting nuclear explosion hanging in the sky.

"You died in that giant explosion-y thingy up there that looks like a star." Sam clarified for him.

"Ohhh, for some reason I thought you were implying I went to heaven." Max said. "Maybe it was the pointing?"

Max might as well have gone to heaven considering how it all happened, Sam thought. The martyr-like way Max went out had to have been enough to redeem him in any hard-to-please deity's heart.

"It was probably the pointing." Sam said.

"And I can't teleport..." Max said with horror flashing in his eyes. " _You're_ the teleporter!"

Sam would be upset that he could conclude this wasn't his Max, but in all reality, a Max is a Max no matter what alternate life events he'd experienced. Sam stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"Gosh," Sam gave the new Max an adoring smile, "it's pretty darn cute you still haven't noticed you didn't exactly _go back in time_ yet." 

"Of course I noticed," Max said awkwardly, "I'm _also_ trying to make small talk!" 

Sam stared at Max in silent surprise for a beat. He noticed the slight droop in Max's ears that signaled he was genuinely upset.

The words "Oh, well in that case..." were caught behind Sam's lips. He wanted to say something, but he couldn't formulate anything morally supportive. Sam decided to just go check out the alley Max told him he parked the time traveling elevator.

"How do you suppose we'll get you back to your timeline?" Sam asked him.

"Nothing we could try would work." The flopping sound of Max's feet hitting the ground could be heard at Sam's back. "I doubt Bosco's inept enough to know how to _fix_ the time scanner."

He figured he'd tell Max that Bosco was out of town later.

Sam raised his eyebrow at Max from over his shoulder. "So you and your Sam messed up your time scanner?"

"I slept on it funny!"

The trusty old time traveling elevator stood where Max said it was. Not that he didn't trust Max's word, he just wanted to see it.

There it was. Sam ran his hands down the edges of all the cards in their home slots, and plucked out one he hadn't seen yet. He'd definitely never seen a card that looked like this one before. It didn't have any indicators on where it lead to, and the bar code just looked... reversed? That wasn't possible for a bar code to print reversed. Unless you wanted to be a smartass about it. It was just that every synapse in Sam's brain short-circuited when he tried to make sense of it, because it _worked_ for the elevator, and it _took_ Max somewhere – but the coding, Sam supposed, was all different. It was just all around irregular. Sam stuffed it back into where Max had left it.

"Mind telling me what exactly happened?" Sam comfortably leaned against one of the elevator's sides. "Maybe if you retrace your steps leading up to how you got here, we could figure out how to get you back home."

"Do you _really_ want me to tell you? Or would you like a flashback sequence instead?"

"A flashback sequence would be less boring, actually."

"Flashback sequence it is!"

____

_The entire Northern United States was going to shambles. Max, Mama Bosco, Papierwaite and his attachment Yog-Soggoth, the C.O.P.S., and Superball had all congregated to a lab/bunker setup Mama Bosco had prepared for situations not at all like, but similar to, this one._

_Max's eyes were tearfully glued to one of the monitors._

_"This is incredible." Max said._

_"No it's not!" Mama Bosco exasperatedly said from her spot by her radio transmitter._

_Max ignored her and wiped the tears off of his face. "I am so proud of him. It's like only yesterday Sam was just a shy, humble aspiring detective with psychic powers unexpectedly thrust upon him... but look at him now!"_

_Superball quietly stepped in to obscure Max's vision like a mother interrupting her son's TV time. Max leaned to the side. So did Superball. Max squinted in a provoked manner at him. Superball adjusted his shades._

_"I'm afraid it's not as amazing as you think it is, sir," Superball informed Max._

_"Not following." Max said. "Out of the way."_

_"Sir," Superball cut in, "as standing President, you're going to have to protect your country from the former President's reign of terror."_

_"Oh, sure, sure." Max said. "Don't pop a blood vessel_ _, Superball. Just five more minutes! Can't you see he's getting really close to the monster truck show they scheduled today!? I HAVE TO SEE WHAT HE DOES TO THE MONSTER TRUCKS!"_

_"I'm sorry, sir." Superball frowned. "But if you don't want to go through the legal fiasco that would ensue if you choose to watch the former President wreak havoc on another gaggle of innocent people he pledged to serve, you'll want to act as soon as possible."_

_"I hear you loud and clear." Max said irritably. "I'll stop Sam as soon as I get to see him stomp all over the monster trucks like burritos scattered on the floor. Have you seen a monster truck get smashed by something bigger than a monster truck? I don't think so! Normally the monster trucks are the ones doing the smashing, but if we're all lucky... not this time!"_

_Suddenly every monitor screen in the room powered down. All eyes were on Mama Bosco who smugly held the plugin end of an electrical cord that brought power to the machine._

_"HEY!" Max pointed angrily at her._

_"Thank you, ma'am." Superball said._

_Mama Bosco smiled at him and dropped the cord at her feet._

_Max crossed his arms. "Fair enough." He turned to Superball. "What's the plan?"_

_"We send a barrage of nuclear missiles to-"_

_"WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH," Max laughed incredulously. "NUCLEAR MISSILES? MISSILES THAT ARE OF THE NUCLEAR CALIBER?"_

_Superball nodded slowly._

_"An entire BARRAGE of them!?" Max questioned further. Superball nodded some more. "You've seen what those can do, right? Just one would be massive overkill." Max gestured to the monitors though they were still off. "That's Sam out there. It's just Sam."_

_"We can't leave anything behind, sir." Superball said. "You know how the former President became what he is now, Mr. President. We can't run the risk of more destructive events like this one."_

_"Well, okay, that's one way to do it," Max said, feeling terribly wrong, "what's another way, huh?"_

_"There is no other way, sir." Superball droned sympathetically. "I'm sorry."_

_Max pointed at him. "No." he said. "NO, I say! That's defeatist talk! C.O.P.S. talk!" Max turned his attention to the rest of the room. "Anyone have any other ideas?"_

_There was an affirmative beep from the back of the room._

_Max dug his knuckles into his hips. "Anyone who's NOT the C.O.P.S.?"_

_There was a sad beep from the back of the room._

_"You won't hear us out, Max!" Bob's cheerful telemarketer-esque voice complained._

_"Because you guys were the first ones to want Sam's blood and guts spilled all over from this side of the U.S. to the Pacific and that's off the table you guys!" Max yelled seething back. His ears dropped down his back and he growled into the palms of his hands. "Jesus Christ this is why I got stuck to the monitor in the first place! Okay," Max made a momentarily successful attempt to calm himself down. "I'm sure I can come up with something before everybody's at my silky little neck over Sam."_

_Of course, this flashback entails that Max failed at that and he didn't come up with something._

_"Did someone call me?" Inquired a new voice._

_Sybil descended from the entrance in a rubber suit zipped all the way up to her neck. She looked quite comfortable, and it was amazing how every move she made wasn't accompanied by the sounds of flatulent-like squeaks. Her hair was free from its business bun, and she rippled it with a scratch to the back of her head as she approached..._

____

"Hang on," Sam rudely interrupted.

The two of them had seated themselves on top of the time traveling elevator to make reviewing the flashback more comfortable.

"Need some more popcorn?" Max asked.

"No." Sam said, "Hm... I really thought you were going to ask me how Sybil managed to get pregnant."

"SYBIL'S PREGNANT!?" Max screamed with a highly disturbed look on his face.

Sam pursed his lips. "Never mind."

____

"NO WAIT!!!" Max screamed. "HOLD ON YOU CAN'T DO THAT, _GET RID OF THE UNDERSCORES BORDERING THE END OF ONE SCENE FROM THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER!!!"_

Sam covered his face and laughed. "What? What's wrong?"

"SYBIL IS PREGNANT!?" Max repeated himself. "WHO!!!! WHO DID THIS!?"

"Damn, I just shouldn't'a said anything." Sam shook his head. "Y-y'see Max... when... when the disembodied head off of the statue of one of our earliest Presidents and a woman love each other..." Sam paused to gag. "Wh... when they love each other... very much..."

Max's fur stood on end. He stared at Sam with intense bugged out eyes. _"ABE'S_ _ALIVE!!!??"_ He shrieked.

Sam's mouth dropped open. "What!? Abe's dead where you're from? Holy snack foods that shouldn't be turned into cereal but are anyway!"

"The sour patch kids one was surprisingly good," Max noted.

"No it wasn't!" Sam refuted. "You're gonna have to tell me the story of how _that_ happened later. Now don't interrupt the flashback again, bonehead, you could seriously confuse the readers and scare them away!"

"I won't do it again unless it's an emergency." Max promised.

______

_... Ironically enough Sybil had appeared when Max was thinking about her. Just about anything that reminded Max of the times before the whole world was begging him to kill Sam would have been comforting, and Sybil was the right reminder. Max zipped up to her and gave her a really hard nonconsensual high five._

_"OW!" Sybil winced and shook her hand out. "MAX!"_

_"Did you come here because you're full of ideas you could brainstorm with me on how to gently stop Sam from slowly but surely destroying the world? I'm open to non-gentle ways, by the way. Just as long as he's in tact at the end."_

_Sybil scowled at him. "No!" She said. "I was literally asking if somebody here called me – on my phone? I just got a new one and dropped it in the toilet."_

_"Did you put it in rice?" Mama Bosco asked._

_"I can't do that," Sybil said, "Sam ruined the last of the world's rice stockpile... I have to save what I have for eating!"_

_"Wait," Mama Bosco pressed one earpiece of her headphones closer to her ear and listened in for a few seconds, "yeah, that checks out. I'm a little delayed on updates on the state of the world; Sam destroyin' some important news stations and all."_

_"Death to Sam!" Curt's synthetic voice cried._

_Chippy gave one shrill, urgent beep in solidarity._

_Max felt his ears shake under no will of his own. Why didn't anyone else think what Sam was doing was cool?! At this rate, everyone except Max would be agreeing that the world would be better off without Sam the more they felt inconvenienced by him._

_Out of the corner of Max's eye he saw Superball standing in front of the detonate button and whipped onto the surface it sprouted from, ferally hissing Superball away from it._

_Superball folded his hands behind his back and bowed his head in shame._

_"Sorry, sir." Superball said. "Desperate times..."_

_Max lunged at Superball and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Superball, LOOK AT ME!" He demanded. Max clanked Superball's shades against his face. "YOU HAVE TO KEEP YOURSELF TOGETHER, MAN!! WE CAN STOP SAM WITHOUT BLOWING HIM AND ALL OF NEW YORK TO SMITHEREENS. OKAY? OKAY."_

_Max dropped Superball's shoulders and got down from the counter._

_"I believe in you, sir." Superball quietly said as he watched Max go._

_Max saw Sybil standing with Mama Bosco and Papierwaite. She was talking with them. Max slid on his knees in front of her to get her attention._

_"Please help me and Sam?" Max gingerly asked her. "Like good old times?"_

_"Oh, fine." Sybil rolled her eyes. "Have you considered shrinking him down to his regular size? Or smaller even? I bet you'd like to be the taller one in the relationship for a change, right?" She elbowed Max's ears._

_Mama Bosco snapped her fingers. "Horse shit," She said, "I knew I was forgetting somethin'."_

_"What?" Sybil asked._

_"The shrink ray! That baby's been stuck in waiting on my list for years because I was caught up in other projects." She shook her head slowly. "It'd take too long to make one in time."_

_Yog-Soggoth joined in. "Even if you had one available, us Elder Gods are shapeshifters. The man can change back and you'd have to shrink him again and, oh, it would just be undoably tedious."_

_It was then that Papierwaite spoke up. "Perhaps we could enter the inner machinations of his body through his mouth and remove what element of inhumanity altered him so?"_

_Yog-Soggoth sighed heavily, "Does this look like an episode of the Magic School Bus to you, Papierwaite?" He asked with a shake of his tendrilled head. "Honestly."_

_Sybil did a really good job at not laughing at that._

_"Plus," Max said, "its hard to notice, but Sam's actually been avoiding eating people this whole time. Give or take a really good hider."_

_That was when Max was provided with an idea he liked – an idea of his own._

_"I know what to do," Max said._

_"Yeah?" Sybil turned her head to him. "What?"_

_"All we have to do is walk up to him and talk him down," Max said, "Sam's the softest fella I know; it can't go wrong."_

_"I don't like that." Sybil said. "... But if you're sure it'll work..."_

_At sunset,_ _Max drove them to Sam's whereabouts. When they got there, the ground continued to shake with each of Sam's steps not unlike how it felt to drive the DeSoto. Max was telling himself he was going to be nagging Sam about the car in a few hours when this was all over._

_Max got out and took a few slow steps, just watching Sam lumber closer to the monster car show. He could hear the distant revving every so often when the pause in Sam's breathing and the pause in his gargantuan taloned feet colliding with the ground synchronized. He checked on Sybil and saw she was still sitting in the passenger's seat. She looked frozen. Soulless, even. Staring straight ahead of herself and not registering anything around her in particular._

_"Sybil," Max waved her over._

_Sybil tugged on locks of her hair and came out. She stood next to him. So close her thighs were bumping against the back of his head. He didn't blame her, Sam was pretty breathtakingly scary._

_Not so breathtaking that Max couldn't handle it, however._

_"HEY SAM!" Max raised both of his hands above his head and waved wildly to help Sam pick out his microscopic-in-comparison form._

_Sam slowed down – slower than he was already going. He looked around himself at eye level instead of down where most people would be in relation to himself._

_"SAAAAAAM!" Max singsonged. "LITTLE LOWER, DOOFUS!"_

_"Max, be nice!" Sybil hissed. "What if he gets mad and swats us so hard the last thing we ever see is the curvature of the earth?!"_

_Sam blinked and cocked his head when he looked down._

_"It's fine," Max assured her, "Sam's highly predictable. He's gonna be happy to see us."_

_Shortly after that, Sam acknowledged that Max and Sybil had come to pay him a visit during his rampage and bent down just so – and he smiled his scaly jowls open to reveal endless seas of razor sharp teeth larger than any dinosaur's and greeted them with an ear drum ruining roar. The gale from his lungs knocked a stop sign free from between his teeth, and sent it hurtling miles and miles off in the distance._

_Sybil screamed in overwhelmed terror and shut herself in the driver's seat of the DeSoto. She started it up and sped off._

_"Jeez," Max cringed to himself._

_Sam let out a whine that rumbled through the air like prolonged thunder and reached a clawed hand out for the steadily departing DeSoto._

_"Hey!" Max called up to him. "No worries, I think we can trust her with that old girl! By the way, she's overdue for a meeting with a car doctor I'm pretty sure! Saaaam?"_

_Sam got lower and fixed his bright violet eyes on Max. He trilled low in his throat at Max. I_ _t was like a purr constructed out of an entire forest of tree trunks snapping. Max found that pretty cool, Sam wasn't supposed to be able to purr. He was a dog._

_"Don't play the dumb giant card on me," Max said, "you're not that dumb."_

_Sam puffed a gust of hot air over Max that whipped his ears. Max covered his nose._

_"Oh, jesus..." Max choked. "It smells like everything... all at once!"_

_Sam's violet eyes smiled at Max. His hand hovered toward Max, and he outstretched his palm with his claws curled down at the pavement when it was close enough._

_Max leapt into the air before launching himself onto one of Sam's claws. Sam began to lift him up, tenderly holding Max like he was a dove's egg._

_"Yes! " Max cheered, "FUCK YEAH! LET'S FUCK UP SOME MONSTER TRUCKS, SAAAAAM!!"_

_Sam turned away from the stadium. And began lumbering away._

_"Wait," Max sputtered. "Wait! Waitwaitwaitwait!" Max reached a wanting hand toward the shrinking stadium, still clinging to one of Sam's fingers. "No! NOOOOOO!"_

_When Max finally calmed down, he realized that Sam was taking him to the tallest sky scraper he could find. And even then, Max felt like he needed to ask._

_"Sam, you big brute, where are you taking me?"_

_Sam, of course, was incapable of answering verbally with his new form. Instead of using words, his clawed thumb carefully touched Max like he was petting a moth. Max comfortably leaned back and hugged Sam's super-sized thumb._

_Sam climbed them one-handed up one side of the building and rested when his he could hold onto the antennae thing at the top of all sky scrapers who's function escapes all. There, they watched the final minutes of the sun's presence, the clamor of the cracked streets and chomped establishments, and the soft wail of sirens in the air._

_"Oh, Sam!" Max sighed, "How'd you know I always thought it'd be fucking sick to make a reference to that movie with the giant gorilla? Have you been reading my diary?"_

_Max spared looking at the scenery to gaze up at Sam's magnificent football field of a face. He was still soaking it all in as well, destruction and mundanity coming together for just the two of them._

_"You're my giant gorilla, Sam." Max said affectionately._

____

Sam raised his hand. "I'm having an emergency actually."

"Gotta tinkle?" Max asked him.

"No," Sam said, "different emergency." 

When Max didn't pick up on what he was alluding to, Sam joined his hands together and decided to be a little more clear.

" _Haven't you also_ _noticed this flashback is getting_ _kind of...?"_

The two of them hadn't had to use the word much throughout their lives. In fact, as Sam knew it, Max preferred they never used it at all. But in this case, much like how Sam felt the need to halt the flashback sequence once again, this was an emergency.

Sam whispered it out of respect. "... _gay?"_

Max would typically twist into little knots over this and say he wasn't in love with Sam, and he'd make up this whole speech about how Sam was just his best friend in the whole world and with that ushered in the honorable status of being Max's favorite person out of everyone he knew. But not this time.

When Sam met eyes with Max, he felt a contrast in both of their auras. Max was just smiling at him. It was one of his playful smiles at that. 

"Max?" Sam tried to coax any kind of information out of him.

Sam watched with distraught confusion as Max doubled over and kicked his powerful hind paws with laughter. When the chorus died down to giggles he peaked up at Sam from between his ears that had fallen, and burst into full on delighted cackles again.

"Yeah," Max said in a voice twisted into a whine from laughter, "it's pretty gay," he sniffed in an attempt to keep his composure, "what the fuck. Why is it gay?" He wheezed and dissented into another manic fit of laughter.

Sam grimaced in surprise and went hot in the face.

"Wh... what do you mean?" Sam asked over the unwelcome feeling of butterflies.

That made Max kick him playfully in the side with his little hind paws. Sam was just about wringing his hands out at this point.

Was Max agreeing with him in an uncomfortable hindsight kind of sentiment? Or was he being ironic about it? Had Max's relationship with his Sam delve into a more intimate territory than Sam got to explore with his Max?

Sam's face went hotter and he berated himself for even considering that even mattered. There was _no way in hell_ he was going to try and get a clearer answer out of Max here and now. The most likely thing was that Max was just trying to embarrass him. Sam was absolutely embarrassed. There was no doubt about that.

"Um," Sam said in a voice that was all too tiny on accident. He cleared his throat to correct himself. "Carry on."

Max nudged him some more with the squishy little toe beans of his paw. Sam needed to lean away. If Max touched him too much right now, Sam was certain his brain would melt and spill all out of his ears.

"Would it be better if we skipped to the end?" Max asked him.

Sam thanked every unknown power in the universe. "Yes." Sam said.

"Okay, so," Max said, "not unlike that movie with the giant gorilla, you swatted some helicopters out of the sky, refused to let me go so I had to jump for it, and everybody except me vehemently believed you needed to die for the good of society! And all of my ideas SUCKED because I don't do well under pressure and I couldn't fuckin' figure out where Sybil and the DeSoto went! _SO,"_ He explained with deep aggression, "This was looking like a serious, _permanent disaster that I couldn't get us out of!!!"_

____

_"Are you ready, sir?" Superball asked in a sterile voice._

_Max absolutely was not ready at all. He stood there, grinding all his braincells together in an attempt to invent any more ways to buy them extra time._

_Mama Bosco touched Max's shoulder in condolence._

_"Max," She said softly, "I don't want him to die either, you know." she said. "If you can find any recent samples of DNA of his, I can make a clone of him so it'll be like he was never gone."_

_That was when the lightbulb went off for Max._

_Never gone!_ _With the plan forming in his conventionally useless brain, Max could press that big red button and still Sam would live!_

_He always had several furs of Sam's caught in his own pelt. Max just had to dig around, and there he had it pinched in his fingertips._

_Mama Bosco reached for it and Max's hand dodged her's._

_"We don't need a clone," Max said, "The only way out of this is if I can stop it all from happening in the first place!"_

_Mama Bosco looked bewildered, yet hopeful. "Really?" She said. "How?"_

_Max's hand plunged onto the detonate button. He failed to watch the screen when it went from showcasing Sam's rampage to a blinding white._

_"Time travel!" Max yelled over the sound of Mama Bosco's unnerved gasp._

_Max conveniently ignored the cheers of the C.O.P.S. and Superball's woeful sobs._

_"... I can only assume you know what you're doing?" Mama Bosco said with that tinge of judgement hiding in her words._

_"Of course I do!" Max snapped._

_He whipped Bosco's carbon scanner out, stuck his tongue out in concentration and scanned Sam's fur sample._

_"You're really gonna use that?" Mama Bosco placed her hands on her hips. "What's that even for, it looks all dinged up!"_

_"It's just a little something Bosco whipped up to make time travel a little more easy," Max explained._

_"My baby?" Mama Bosco said proudly._

_The time card came out of the scanner like a polaroid picture, and it was clearly not a viable time card. Max clutched it hard._

_Mama Bosco was breathing all down his neck and on his shoulder to get a good look at the card. "I know it's not s'posed to look like that." She said._

_"It has to work!" Max said stubbornly._

____

"And it would have worked," Max said, that striking grin of his staying plastered on his face, "but it didn't! But it definitely would have worked if it could have!"

"So a shoddy time card sent you to a similar but not entirely related timeline instead of to the date you needed." Sam concluded for sure. "That's stupid, but I understand. Do you think maybe if you scanned my fur it'd send us back to your timeline?"

"No way," Max shook his head. "That's even _more_ idiotic, Sam."

Sam shrugged. "I guess you're right."

Another silence fell over them. Sam wanted to give the silly idea a try so this version of Max could have _some_ chance at getting back where he belonged.

"SOOOO," Max interrupted Sam's thoughts, "what do you wanna do now?"

Sam shrugged. "Now that I've got you and you've got me, I suppose we can just go back to business as usual. All is right with the world?"

Max gave him a relieved smile. 

"All is right with the world." He peacefully affirmed.

The two of them headed back for their office. They indulged in stupid jokes like always and shot their guns at litter on the street.

"50 points if you can get that pizza box to fly into the trash can over there!" Max announced.

**BANG.**

The pizza box whirled off in a direction opposite to that of the trash can it was near.

"That was a lame way to try and flip the bird at physics, anyhow." Sam said.

"10 points for trying." Max said supportively. He pulled two revolvers out from his inventory and grinned. "My turn."

"See if you can–"

**PA-POW PA-POW PA-POW PA-POW!**

"What in the hell were you shooting at just now?" Sam asked.

"This place is filthy, Sam." Max said wisely. "Everything here is garbage!" 

Sam wiped a tear out of the corner of his eye. "I missed you somethin' awful, little buddy."

Sam hadn't noticed Max stopped playing target practice until an embarrassing handful of time went by.

They were already passing by Bosco's Inconvenience Store. It was closed like Sam expected it to be, though he had no idea who was still changing out the papers with new ones. One of the headlines read: _" **Renowned Scientist Sucked Into Screaming Vortex Last Week!** "_

What kind of brilliant mind allows a preventable accident like _that_ to happen to themself, Sam wondered?

When he finally thought to check on his little buddy, Sam realized he'd been getting stared at for a good while. Sam's face heated and he brushed one of his floppy ears behind his shoulder.

"What's up, pal?" Sam asked.

"Hey Sam, do you have a hat here? Because that's where I draw the line."

"Aw, hell, I forgot my hat?" Sam touched his scruffy head. "We gotta go back for that thing."

Max turned and pointed ahead of himself.

"To the hat!" He shouted and they ran back down the street they came like a couple of brainless maniacs.

"Awaaaaaay!" Sam yelled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it to the end of this chapter, I would like to thank you and hope you were entertained. **[rubs my little hands together]** Today was the last day before the draft for this got deleted, I suppose I'm a daredevil in a really unconventional way like that. 
> 
> If you want to stick around for the long run, Lorne and Geek aren't going to appear for a hot minute but they will soon. I know, I know you came here for only for them. We must be patient.


End file.
